Over the years there have been many discussions about what constitutes sustainable tourism. There is no doubt that these are important conversations, and yet, I am amazed at how little time we spend on addressing how to implement sustainable tourism in businesses and destination communities. Introducing sustainability in tourism requires a wide range of skills. The following list is far from comprehensive but gives a flavor of knowledge and abilities required by sustainable tourism practitioners. Change management skillsInternal and external communication skillsStrategic planning Ability to execute tactical actionscommitment...

05 October, 2022 /

Sustainable tourism, at is simplest, is a set of activities designed to maximize the benefits of tourism.  Making sure we maximize the benefits of tourism, and minimize the negatives, particularly for host communities, is hard to argue against. So why don’t we see more great examples of sustainable tourism? Sustainable tourism is a wicked problem. Wicked problems are both complicated and complex. Sustainable tourism is complicated because, to achieve its promise, there are many things to do. Fortunately, over the last 4o years we’ve got a pretty good idea of what...

23 May, 2020 /

It has become common for calls for sustainability in tourism. But what does that mean ? The definitions of sustainable tourism don't help answer this question much. Most definitions these days include the Triple-Bottom-Line (People, Planet, Profits), TBL, and the importance of taking a long term view - considering both today and tomorrow. These definitions are conceptually appealing but frustratingly vague. In some ways, sustainable tourism requires three-dimensional thinking. On one dimension, there are the activities required for each component of the TBL. For example, the simplest...

07 June, 2019 /

The idea that tourism is a system has been around for a while. Morrison and Mill wrote the first edition of The Tourism System in 1985 - and they weren't the first to recognize the concept. Since then there have been advances - Louise Twining Ward - added that tourism was a Complex and Adaptive System and Noel Scott and his colleagues have done great work on understanding the dynamics within these networks. So - if we know its a system - why don't we treat it like one ?...

22 May, 2015 /

Tourism is a system. A big, complex, ever changing, system. Within the tourism system are thousands of embedded systems. Each destination, each distribution channel, each sector - is a system. Each system is unique. ...

12 May, 2015 /